


Deaths, Time, and a Librarian

by raven_aorla



Series: Death Through the Fandoms [2]
Category: Discworld - Pratchett, The Sandman
Genre: F/M, Gen, RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-28
Updated: 2010-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-08 09:26:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_aorla/pseuds/raven_aorla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death of the Endless has a favor to ask of several Discworld characters. A major fix-fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deaths, Time, and a Librarian

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this years ago, and it has now come true. Every part of it. Precisely how it went down. LALALALA

The students have just gone home. Susan Sto Helit is sneaking a chocolate in the coat closet again, wondering if Lobsang can drop by any time (hah) soon. She considers how being in love with the current personification of Time is both stupidly inconvenient and terribly romantic for the granddaughter and occasional incarnation of Death, though you might need a microscope to find the difference between the two. Then she hears a caw and what sounds like ambulatory toenail clippings approach the door.

SQUEAK.

"Hey, could you let us in?"

"What is it now, you two?"

SQUEAK. SQUEAK.

"He's saying your grandfather wants to see you. Well, he has a visitor who he wants you to meet, or who wants to meet you, or something or other like that. Hey, you got any…"

"I don't have any eyeballs, Quoth, except for the two you can't have under any circumstances." Her hair, as always with a mind of its own, starts unraveling from its bun and knotting into a dome again.

"Never hurts to check."

………………………………………………………………………………………..

AH, SUSAN. TEA?

Tea isn't generally black, but it tastes decently enough. Susan's grandfather sits at the head of a long black table, petting a grey kitten that seems not to mind bony fingers. The faint blue supernovae in his eye sockets glow steadily.

Across from Susan is a milky-pale, slender young woman. It takes an observant few seconds to notice, since she is unusually garbed in long black trousers, heavy black boots, and a shirt with no shoulders, held up only by two strings. She also has a glistening Ankh symbol hanging around her neck, and a black curl under one eye like those seen on the kings of Djelibeybi. She smiles broadly at Susan and reaches to shake her hand. "Hi there! You must be Death of Discworld's granddaughter Susan. Glad to finally meet you."

"Hello," Susan replies calmly. "And who are you?"

"Maybe you should explain it?" the woman suggests.

He speaks even more slowly and deliberately than usual. YOU ARE AWARE THAT THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WORLD? I AM MERELY DEATH OF THIS ONE. SHE IS MY SUPERIOR. SHE IS DEATH OF ALL THINGS, EVERYWHERE, IN ALL FORMS OF REALITY.

Susan takes another sip of tea. By this point very little fazes her. "If you are death of all things, first off you don't look much the part."

Death laughs. "Neither did you when you were a child and had to take his place. The difference between me and your grandfather is that he is shaped by what people expect him to be like. That's how Discworld works. I may appear to someone as something they can understand, but I am myself and have always been."

"So why do you need him? Is he a…a pet, like Death of Rats?"

SQUEAK! He appeared to be under the table. When she looked he waved his tiny scythe at her.

"No offense meant, Death of Rats."

SQUEAK SQUEAKSQUEAK SQUEAK.

"One day I will collect your grandfather after he has collected Great A'Tuin. The Discworld is not a part of ordinary reality. It's a skerry. That means it's a world made of dreamstuff. That doesn't mean it's any falser than any other world out there. It just means that it was created by my brother Dream."

She nibbles at her black-painted fingernails. "A long, long time ago I was depressed about how life worked. People aren't generally happy to see me, and that started to get me down. It's natural for people to die, but it didn't seem right that so much of in between birth and dying was miserable and unfair.

"No one is closer to my brother than me. He wanted to give me a gift. He knows I like books that have talking animals and are funny with happy endings – so he made a skerry for me where things happen because people expect them to happen that way, and everything turns out for the best. And so that wouldn't mean extra work, he appointed a Death to do my job within this sphere, made out of the dreams of the people who came to live in it. I…actually keep your world in a jar on my desk."

Susan takes that in for a moment of stunned silence, and then she begins to laugh. So does DEATH.

"So why are you here now? What do you need us for?"

IN THE LARGER UNIVERSE IN WHICH SHE ACTS RATHER THAN ME, A MAN LIES DYING WHOM SHE WISHES ME TO GREET INSTEAD.

"My brother put a pathway into the Discworld into the dreams of a gifted writer, who has spent more than twenty-five years writing books about it, not knowing that they aren't his own invention. They are very good. He was made a knight for contribution to literature."

"Why do you need me, then?"

"You are still on good terms with the wizards at the Unseen University?"

"Wizards are pretty useless, Didi."

"Not any of them. I want you to persuade the Librarian to come too. I'll give you a free ride to Earth in exchange. You can spend a day doing the tourist thing. Just don't tell any normal people about it. It would upset them."

Susan bites her lip and then looks over her shoulder. "Lobsang, would you like to come too?"

_How did you know I was here?_

"I know."

And a hand materializes to take hers.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

SIR TERRY PRATCHETT?

"Ook."

"It's…it's you!"

"We're here to take you home, sir."

_I can take you to a valley where the cherry blossoms never fade._


End file.
